Binders Full of Women?

Is adopting quotas for women’s representation on corporate boards discriminatory to both men and women? Comparative Sex Regimes and Corporate Governance, a Law School symposium on February 8, will examine and explore these corporate board quotas.

Norway’s leadership in adopting quotas for women’s representation on corporate boards has inspired several other countries, a move which represents a major shift in corporate governance norms and in efforts to attain sex equality in the workplace. But at what cost?

On February 8 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., join the Pace International Law Review at the Comparative Sex Regimes and Corporate Governance Symposium, which will examine corporate board quotas through various lenses to explore questions such as: Are these measures designed to achieve good governance, women’s empowerment, or gender balance? Are quotas, which depend on the sex binary, an effective tool to realize those objectives? If not, how might boards circumnavigate around them? What are possible unintended consequences of quotas? Will corporate governance change once capital has been (partly) feminized? Is the French differentiation between diversity and mixité (gender diversity) relevant? This symposium will bring together thinkers from a variety of disciplines and perspectives to analyze and comprehend the meaning and impact, both deliberate and unintended, of such quotas.